Follow The Money: Funding The Biden-Harris Migrant Crisis

The following is an edited transcript of a Morning Wire interview between Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief John Bickley and Lora Ries, Director of the Border Security and Immigration Center at The Heritage Foundation.

The concerns raised by citizens of Springfield, Ohio about the impact of a massive influx of Haitian migrants were amplified this week after former President Trump brought the town up in his debate with Vice President Harris. While the legacy media has attempted to dismiss the concerns raised by residents there, more details have emerged, revealing troubling and far deeper issues driving the crisis in the small Rust Belt town. We sat down with an expert to follow the money on mass migration in the U.S., and zero in on the Biden-Harris administration’s role in promoting it. 

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JOHN: Joining us now is Lora Ries, Director of the Border Security and Immigration Center at Heritage. Lora, thanks for joining us. Now, there’s been so much attention on Springfield, Ohio this week because of the debate. We had a committee hearing on Tuesday night where a lot of people came forward from the community talking about situations that are extremely alarming, including some deaths. We’ve had the tragic death of the 11-year-old due to a Haitian migrant who was driving erratically, hitting a school bus. We also had a report that came out Tuesday night from one of the residents saying that her mother, she believes, was killed by a Haitian driver. But the overarching story here is that there are 60,000 people in this town and a reported 20,000 Haitians who are now working in the area, which is obviously a massive population and culture shift. What do we know so far about this situation?

LORA: Yes, unfortunately, Springfield is just one example of so many communities, whether it’s small towns, but even large cities that have been suffering under the crush of humanity, dropped off in their communities and towns and cities throughout the country, under the Biden-Harris administration. Because when you look at the numbers that Customs and Border Protection reports – over 10.2 million enforcement actions, inadmissible aliens encountered nationwide, the vast majority of which are being released into the U.S. according to DHS Secretary Mayorkas. Plus another well over two million known “gotaways.” They’re coming to our towns, and so right now the spotlight is on Springfield, and rightly so, because American citizens there are suffering from too many people and too few resources. If you are literally increasing the population by one-third of people, no matter where they’re from, communities can’t sustain that. The public schools, the classrooms are overflowing with students, most of whom don’t speak English or it’s not their first language, which then triggers the need for translators and other services that the schools and districts weren’t prepared for and don’t have the money for. Same thing for healthcare, long waits in emergency rooms to see a doctor, to see a specialist – and the cost to all of this. And that doesn’t even get to the crime that the citizens there are reporting on and people being killed. So it is a microcosm right now in the spotlight and rightly so. And if it is waking up more Americans to what is happening under this administration due to their open border policies, then I’m glad more Americans are waking up to the situation.

JOHN: Now again, the reports are around 20,000, specifically Haitians in this area. What have we seen from the Biden administration regarding their policy with Haitians in particular?

LORA: So this population could have come in at least three different ways under this administration. First of all, the Secretary of Homeland Security has created dozens of immigration parole programs – unconstitutionally and unlawfully – to bring in tens of thousands of inadmissible aliens each month. One such program is for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans. And so each month, 30,000 aliens without visas from those four countries come into the U.S. and are resettled. So that’s one way this Haitian population could be in Springfield.

Another is a program called Temporary Protected Status, which is, Congress intended it to be, about protecting foreign nationals who were already in the U.S. when either a natural disaster, like a volcano or a hurricane happens in their home country, or there are temporary emergency situations. And that’s the language, the clause that the Mayorkas DHS used for Haiti. The problem is this TPS gets extended over and over and over again, over sometimes decades for some countries. And so it is no longer “temporary.” It becomes a permanent form of relief. And Secretary Mayorkas also ”re-designates” Haiti, just did so, for TPS. Now re-designation is nowhere in the immigration statute. But what that does is it moves the date to more recent waves of Haitians who have illegally come into the U.S. to make them eligible for this protection. That was not the intent of Congress at all.

The third way this population could be there is if they were resettled as refugees. However, many Haitians have not been in Haiti for a number of years. They were safely resettled in the third country, including Mr. Joseph, who was the one who killed the young boy and injured 20 other students on that school bus you mentioned. He left Haiti, I want to say in 2014, but he didn’t come to the U.S. until 2022. That means he was safely resettled in a third country and would not be eligible for refugee protection here in the U.S.

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JOHN: And you made a point there that the people who have this protected status have come over illegally. They were illegal immigrants, then granted protected status after the fact, correct?

LORA: Right. If you were here legally, you don’t need TPS. Right. So it’s, in essence, it’s for someone who’s here, either they snuck across the border or they came in with a visa and overstayed. But if they were here lawfully, they wouldn’t need TPS. For the parole, Mayorkas is mass paroling inadmissible aliens into the country. What that means is the law requires you to go get a visa with the State Department overseas and then come to the U.S. So all of these parolees do not have a visa because he’s directed would-be illegal aliens, “Hey, don’t cross illegally over the border between ports of entry. Use the CBP Mobile One application, make an appointment, go to a port of entry, and we will parole you in and give you work authorization.” For now they still don’t have visas. It doesn’t make them lawful. CBP is reporting those as enforcement actions. And so if they were here lawfully, CBP would not be reporting them.

JOHN: Now, there’s been a lot of conflicting reports about what’s happening in Springfield. We have a reporter on the ground looking into many of them. One report we’re hearing is that residents are seeing migrants using specific debit cards or credit cards. If that’s true, where would those be coming from? Could they be coming from NGOs?

LORA: They could be. We’ve seen that in other locations, New York City for example, but all the way throughout Mexico and Central America. The Biden-Harris administration has set up quite an infrastructure with NGOs from Panama North all the way to the U.S. and throughout the U.S. to facilitate this mass migration, and whether that’s transporting them, giving them debit cards. The UNHCR has been involved in giving debit cards to the migrants in Central America. We give billions of dollars through the State Department to UNHCR and other organizations. And so it’s consistent with that, I couldn’t pinpoint which NGO this Springfield population may have received such cards from, but it’s consistent with what this administration has been doing.

JOHN: You know, we hear the term “non-governmental organizations,” but you’re saying they work in coordination with the federal government. And they receive federal funds, correct?

LORA: Absolutely. Billions of dollars. This has truly become an industrial complex. These NGOs, including faith-based organizations, like Catholic Charities or Lutheran Immigrant Refugee Services or HIAS, the Hebrew equivalent, Church World Services, the list goes on and on. For many of these groups, they now receive more money through federal grants than they do from church donations and so they’ve become very addicted to it. Many of them, if not all of them, are 501c3, they’re tax exempt, and yet they’re spending money to hire lobbyists to advocate for more immigration and to lobby against immigration enforcement. So it’s become a very corrupt, but lucrative business for these groups that this administration relies so heavily on to carry out its open border agenda.

JOHN: Have we seen any congressional action related to these NGOs? Are there any investigations going on to look into how these are being possibly abused?

LORA: There have been some. There have been letters to organizations, to corporations. The most promising aspect was in H.R.2, the Secure the Border Act which the House passed in May of 2023. There was a section in there about defunding money to these NGOs that facilitate illegal immigration. It drew quite the debate when it was being considered in the House Homeland Security Committee. And the lobbyists that these NGOs hire came out in force to lobby against this provision calling for the stripping of funds. Of course, that bill now sits on Senator Schumer’s desk, not going anywhere. And then meanwhile, Congress continues to fund, through each year’s appropriations bill as well as the supplemental bill they passed this April for Ukraine and Israel. But it is billions of dollars going through multiple departments, whether it’s the State Department, DHS, Health and Human Services, for example, in the Ukraine, Israel supplemental. The State Department received $3.5 billion for “Vulnerable Populations” in the migration and refugee assistance. And the president’s International Disaster Assistance Fund for “Vulnerable Populations” received $5.6 billion. So these are slush funds that can be used easily to facilitate mass migration.

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JOHN: Now, finally, there’s been a lot of discussion about the sanctuary city status in some of these cities, particularly New York City as of late. Are some of these small towns sanctuary cities without people realizing it? Or do they have certain designations as places that are friendly to the resettlement of massive populations like this?

LORA: It can be a range of how expressly political leaders declare the city or town to be a sanctuary locality. I mean, in some cases you have mayors going on the record – Athens, Georgia, mayor comes to mind, before Laken Riley was killed, being a sanctuary jurisdiction. But in other communities it could be simply a sheriff or a mayor directing law enforcement not to cooperate with ICE — if ICE places a detainer on a criminal alien to prevent a criminal from being released back onto the street. So it can be a de facto sanctuary jurisdiction, or it could be a very public express, sanctuary jurisdiction, where they pass a law or a resolution.

JOHN: Final question – about the media’s coverage of this story. We’ve seen a dismissive and even aggressive attack on those highlighting this development in Springfield from the legacy media. What are we to make of that?

LORA: There is plenty of evidence of citizens standing up at a town hall or commission meeting saying what is happening on the ground and asking their political leaders, “What do you expect from us? If you’re protecting these illegal aliens, who’s protecting us?” Plenty of video interviews of people who live in the community, citizens explaining what’s happening. And so for the media and the Left to gaslight or attempt to the rest of America saying, ”This really isn’t happening in Springfield, things are fine.” Well, that’s consistent with how they’ve been treating the open border for the past three plus years, but it’s not working. And to just dismiss the concern, real concerns of American citizens shows the contempt that the elite managerial class has for U.S. citizens and their “America Last” attitude.

JOHN: Well, as I said, we’re on the ground there digging into this – and making sure those concerns get the attention they deserve. Lora, thank you so much for coming on, and we’d love to talk to you again.

LORA: Sure, happy to.

JOHN: That was Lora Ries, Director of the Heritage Border Security and Immigration Center – and this has been a Saturday Extra edition of Morning Wire. 

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LISTEN: Catch the full interview on the Saturday Extra edition of Morning Wire